**Showboat[p/B] – the 1951 version. Gorgeous Technicolor photography. Apparently they toned things down for this version, and I should really see the 1936 version if I want the definitive one (I’ve watcvhed bits of it on YouTube. Hard to believe that version was directed by James Whale, who did Frankenstein and The Old Dark House. Kinda like Robert Wise directing West Side Story and The Sound of Music) . I’m a big fan of musicals, and this was apparently a groundbreaking one for its integration of deeper stories and adult themes with the music, but I couldn’t help thinking that musical taste have changed a helluva lot. Aside from “Old Man River”, I really couldn’t get into the songs at all. I’m surprised that the subject of miscegenation played such an important role. Ironically, they couldn’t have an actual black or partly black woman play the role because Southern states wouldn’t run the film if an actual black lady kissed a white man. Times have definitely changed.
The film is also apparently largely responsible for the idea that a Mississippi showboat was basically a standard steamboat. It wasn’t – the boiler would take up the place where the audience would be if they tried to put this on in a standard steamboat. The 1936 film portrayed it correctly – the showboat was actually basically a big box on a boat base that had to propulsive power of its own; it was driven by a “tow boat” that, despite the name, pushed it on the river.
Shin Godzilla – The most recent Japanese version of Godzilla (at least, the most recent non-animated one) resets the clock and tells the story of Godzilla as if no prior version existed. It’s interesting in that
a.) Godzilla sort of “evolves” through the film, starting as an animal that can’t walk upright to become something like the Godzilla we are familiar with.
b.) As far as I can tell, it’s the first fully CGI Japanese Godzilla (an earlier film had a CGI scene of Godzilla swimming underwater, but the rest of the film, was classic guy-in-a-suit. This film looks like it’s exclusively CGI. There have been three films made wholly or partly with US participation that had completely CGI Godzilla, but this looks like the first all-Japanese CGI Godzilla movie.
c.) They try to depict what would actually happen if the Japanese government had to deal with the sudden appearance of a kaiju in Tokyo Bay. So, especially at the beginning, we get lots of shots of people on telephones, people arguing about whose responsibility things are, government operatives staying late at their desks. It’s [iu]Godzilla vs. The Bureaucrats*. And it’s Japanese bureaucracy, so you know it’s extra-bureaucratic. They want to reassure the public, so they lie about the problem being solved, just before Godzilla invades. One functionary is convinced that the threat is a real biological threat, but he’s told that he’s too junior to buck the system. And so on. A very different take on the response to a Monster Invasion. And the bureaucrats ultimately do prevail.
I’ve been watching other Godzilla films I missed recently – Godzilla 2000, Godzilla Tokyo SOS, Godzilla vs. Destroyah. They’re interesting in their own ways, but Shin Godzilla* is really different.
*It apparently means something like “Godzilla II” or “Godzilla Again”, but they wanted to translate it as “Godzilla: Resurgence” before deciding to simply go with the Japanese title.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars – I stumbled across a used copy of the Criterion edition (the only version on DVD I’m aware of), and had to pick it up. Despite many things that today look cringe-worthy, it’s definitely several cuts above the typical science fiction film of the period – or even today. This is, as far as I know, the first SF film to use the idea of a “self destruct” on a space ship, and the only one to use the idea properly and to good effect.
